List of warez groups

Listed here are some of the warez groups – groups of individuals proficient at ripping films, music, or other media, as well as those who can reverse engineer and crack the digital rights management (DRM) measures applied to commercial software – that have attained a level of notoriety, with an introduction of when they were formed and their achievements. According to research, between 2003 and 2009 there were 3,164 active groups, with the majority of these groups being active for no more than two months, with only a small amount being active for many years. The warez scene is a very competitive and volatile environment. Groups are generally not driven by profit, but by reputation.[1]

3DM is a Chinese video game cracking group, "one of the world's biggest" according to Kotaku. Their founder and leader is reported to be a woman using the pseudonym "Bird Sister" (simplified Chinese: 宿菲菲; pinyin: Sù Fēifēi). Unusual for piracy groups, 3DM's members have public profiles on the social network Sina Weibo, and use a blog to inform the public about their activities.
Though 3DM were one of the first groups to offer cracks for games which utilized DRM solutions produced by Denuvo, as the products offered by Denuvo became more popular and challenging to crack 3DM gave up trying to crack games with newer versions of Denuvo's DRM.

In 2016 the group claimed that piracy of games produced by large developers and publishers would be impossible in the coming years, due to the technological challenges of reverse engineering and ultimately cracking the virtualization and licensing schemes employed by new DRM solutions like Denuvo. One of the most notable groups on the web at the time, they publicly announced a year hiatus from developing cracks for games. Since returning in 2017, 3DM have only released games which use Steam licensing, sometimes releasing copies of better protected games which include cracks made by other groups. This practice has been criticized by the groups whose cracks were included in releases under the 3DM name.[2]

Centropy, founded in January 1999, was a warez group which specialized in releasing copies of films, many of which were still in theatres. Touting many "0-day" releases and releases prior to commercial availability, Centropy released and pre-released numerous films.

CLASS (also known as CLS) was a warez group which was the target of federal raids such as Operation Fastlink. They were a global group with members worldwide, often releasing game "rips". The group ceased operations in 2004 after their 1,234th release.[7]

CODEX (also known as CDX) – is a warez group founded in the end of January 2014. They are known for releasing copies of games which use Steam licensing and also for emulating Ubisoft'sUplayDRM protection, as well as Denuvo-protected games. They were accused[8] by the warez group SKIDROW of stealing their code to write an emulator CODEX released for the game Trials Fusion, something CODEX denied,[9] writing that they had written their own. Throughout 2016 and 2017 they have been one of the most active warez groups in releasing commercial computer games. Recently, they rose to fame by becoming the third scene group (and fifth overall) to crack Denuvo, and the second scene to crack it within the day of release, as seen when they cracked Middle-earth: Shadow of War upon its day of release.[10] CODEX collaborated with STEAMPUNKS on at least one game which used Denuvo DRM, South Park: The Fractured But Whole, which they released under the name "CODEPUNKS". In February 2018 CODEX began releasing cracked copies of games from the Microsoft Windows Store.[11] On 12th June 2018 CODEX released a crack emulator for Forza Horizon 3,[12] which later turned out to be a universal emulator crack for Universal Windows Platform games.[13][14]

CONSPIR4CY (releasing mostly as CPY) is a warez group founded in 1999 in Italy.[15][16] They rose in notoriety after releasing Rise of the Tomb Raider andInside in August 2016 under the name of CONSPIR4CY, though they continued using the 'CPY' tag with the release of Doom in September 2016. They became the first group to create proper cracks for games protected by the third iteration Denuvo DRM software. They cracked Resident Evil 7: Biohazard only five days after its release, at the time the shortest amount of time taken to develop a crack for a Denuvo DRM-protected game.[17] They also cracked Mass Effect: Andromeda,[18] only ten days after its release. In July 2017, the warez group SKIDROW criticized the methods used by CONSPIR4CY to crack games using Denuvo DRM.[19] In early 2018, CPY released cracked copies of Assassin's Creed Origins and Far Cry 5, which utilized the most recent version of Denuvo's DRM, and featured additional modification detection in the form of VMProtect and EasyAntiCheat

Active from 1999 to 2006, DEViANCE was one of the most prolific warez groups. Their dissolution has been described as the end of an era, and the current affiliation of ex-DEViANCE members is a reoccurring argument between groups.[20][21][22] Describing members of a modern warez group as ex-DEViANCE became something of a joke within the warez scene.

Released American Pie on the Internet 3 months before its theatrical release.[23][24] They branded their releases with a digital watermark of the letter "Z" which appeared in the corner of the frame.[25] The bootleggers were associated with a web site in Argentina devoted to Quake.[26]

FAiRLiGHT (releasing cracked games as FLT) is one of the oldest groups in warez scene, founded in 1987. As of 2017 the group seemingly focuses on demos and art,[27] with their most recent release of cracked software in December 2016. FAiRLiGHT members were apprehended in raids stemming from the law enforcement Operation Fastlink.

The Dream Team (also known as "TDT") were the first warez group on the IBM PC to introduce intros or "crack'tros" to their game releases. It was one of the first IBM PC groups founded 1988 in Sweden and run by Hard Core or also known as HC/TDT.

Founded in late 2006, HATRED was very active during 2006 to 2007. ViTALiTY has claimed that HATRED were former members of DEViANCE.[30] Some of their major releases included Rainbow Six: Vegas and Resident Evil 4. Their last release was on August 2008.[31]

International Network of Crackers (also known as INC) was one of the premier cracking/releasing warez groups for the IBM PC during the late 1980s and early 1990s. The majority of their releases during 1993 were educational games for children. By early 1994, INC had completely disappeared from the warez scene.

maVen were a film release group from October 2005 until the summer of 2006. Releases from maVen stopped when the FBI caught Gérémi Adam, one of its key members. The 27-year-old Montreal resident has been sentenced to two and a half months in prison and was also ordered to complete 100 hours of community service. He pleaded guilty to distributing two major motion pictures: Invincible and How to Eat Fried Worms[34][35] After the bust, releases ceased and another group called maVenssupplieR immediately took up the slack.[36] In April 2010, the 28-year-old Gérémi Adam died of a drug overdose at the Pointe-aux-Trembles home he shared with his girlfriend, Cynthia Laporte.[37][38][39]

mVs (Maven Supplier) released a workprint of Halloween three days before its official release on August 27, 2007.[40]

PARADOX (also known as PDX) was founded in 1989, mainly cracking games for the Amiga. They went on to crack software for the Windows operating system and other consoles. They were one of the earliest groups to successfully crack Windows Vista, which was supposed to be a difficult task based on changes Microsoft had made to the activation scheme for the software.

The Pirates With Attitudes (also known as PWA) were a major international warez release group from 1992 until 2000. The group was formed by two former INC members known by the pseudonyms Orion and Bar Manager. PWA members were the subjects of law enforcement raids after the passing of the No Electronic Theft or "NET" Act.[43][non-primary source needed]

PROPHET is a subgroup of or otherwise affiliated in some way with RELOADED, whose cracks they re-use in releasing multi-language versions of games. They also tend to release copies containing the latest game content such as DLCs. These are often stylized as MULTi. For example, MULTi7 meaning the release is a copy containing 7 languages - usually some combination of English, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Polish, Czech, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, or some other European language.

Several verses of the rap song Hackers and the Crackers by Zearle are devoted to the group Radium. In 2004, evidence was presented that some of the system sound files included with the Microsoft Windows XP operating system, such as WMPAUD1.WAV, were authored using an unlicensed version of Sound Forge which was supplied by Radium.[47]

Razor 1911 (also known as RZR and RazorDOX) was founded in 1985 in Norway. The group's main focus was to crack software for Commodore 64, but they also had a major presence in the Amiga and the IBM PC warez scenes. They were subjects of raids in Operation Buccaneer and Operation Fastlink.
The group made a comeback in June 2006,[48] and since then has cracked modern copy protection schemes such as Rockstar Games Social Club,[49] Ubisoft's persistent Internet connection requiring DRM,[50] and Battle.NET.[51] In March 2012, Razor1911 announced that their tester and coder DYCUS, who had an active role in making trainers and testing the group's releases, had died of cancer.[52] Since then, the group has seldom released cracked games, focusing on DRM-free titles from GOG.com, often for Linux and MacOSX.

RELOADED (also known as RLD!) was founded in June 2004.[53] Their founders are believed to be ex-DEViANCE members, though their rival group HOODLUM claimed in December 2004 that none of DEViANCE's previous leaders had ever been in RELOADED.[54] The group has cracked several modern protection schemes like SecuROM 8, Blizzard's Battle.NET, and Arxan Anti-Tamper.

REVOLT is a relatively well-known group, gaining popularity for cracking Denuvo anti-tamper protected games. REVOLT published many releases thanks to a Bulgarian hacker called Voksi. Revolt provided "Steamworks fixes" which allowed users to play cracked games on Steam and use multiplayer with other pirates over LAN. Denuvo filed a case against him with the authorities. Police came and took the server PC and Voksi's personal PC.

SKIDROW is a well-known cracking group originally formed in 1990, cracking games for the Amiga platform, and having used the motto "Twice the Fun - Double the Trouble!" since then. A piece of cracktro software released by SKIDROW in 1992 with the game 10 Pinball Fantasies contained a complete list of their membership at the time[55]. The most recent incarnation of SKIDROW began releasing unauthorized copies of games in June 2007, when they announced their return to cracking software.[56]
They were the first Scene group to crack the version of Ubisoft's Uplay DRM which required players to have a persistent Internet connection to Ubisoft's licensing servers, first in Assassin's Creed II[57] and then in Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands.

The group has released cracks for Denuvo Anti-Tamper protected games, Yesterday Origins and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided - A Criminal Past. It is believed the former had a bad implementation of Denuvo which made it easier to reverse engineer, mostly due to a lack of support from Denuvo for protecting games written in C# and specifically games using the Unity game engine, with this lack of support having been previously demonstrated by an anonymous independent cracker having developed a crack for Syberia 3, which also used Unity. The crack for the latter was actually determined to be a modified executable file from the game Deus Ex: Breach, a free game which did not incorporate Denuvo's software, released by the same developers and utilizing the same engine, which had been modified slightly to load the assets from Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. A plurality of SKIDROW's current releases are cracked versions of games that make use of Steam licensing.[58]

In July 2017, in a statement released to commemorate their 10th consecutive year of releases since re-emerging in the PC game cracking scene, SKIDROW made cryptic remarks that the techniques used by CONSPIR4CY, STEAMPUNKS, and members of the Steam Underground warez forum to crack modern copy protections are not proper.[19] These criticisms were themselves criticized on the web, as SKIDROW's apparent standards for a proper crack would seemingly disqualify both their most notable crack of Ubisoft's persistent online connection requiring DRM, which they emulated, and their most recent notable release of a Denuvo-protected game, which they cracked by modifying the executable from another game.

While not precisely a group, the community centered around the Steam Underground web forum and its members have been a notable source of warez development, releases, tools, tutorials, discussions, and information pertinent to other groups since at least 2008. The forum has both Russian and English language boards, and is the home to a number of projects primarily focused on cracking, emulating, and otherwise extending the capabilities of Steam and games released on Steam. Games on other platforms may also be discussed on their own board.

The Steam Underground forums are decidedly "non-scene", though the formal and informal collaboration between its users arguably fit the definition of a warez group. Members of Steam Underground have individually and collectively cracked games featuring DRM schemes such as the version of Ubisoft's Uplay which required players to maintain a persistent Internet connection to their licensing servers, Steam Custom Executable Generation, Arxan Anti-Tamper, Denuvo Anti-Tamper, and more - both generic digital distribution licensing schemes as well as custom protection, such as the copy protection triggers implemented by game developer Croteam in The Talos Principle. Tools and techniques released on the forums have been used to make multiplayer game modes accessible in cracked copies of games, usually enabling pirates to play with other pirates. The cracker known as Baldman released the vast majority of his cracks for Denuvo-protected games on Steam Underground. A Bulgarian hacker known as Voksi uses the Steam Underground forums as a primary point of distribution for cracks of games with advanced virtual machines. In early 2018, Voksi, in collaboration with another Steam Underground user and with material support from a 3DM member, began releasing cracks for previously uncracked games and updated builds of titles which utilized Denuvo DRM. However, Voksi was arrested by Police of Bulgaria in 25 July 2018, making an end to his activity in warez scene.

The forum and its members have often been referenced as some variation of "the Russian site/forum"[19] or directly by name[59] by warez scene groups in statements they have made which mention the site. At least one prominent member of the forum has been in contact with warez scene release group members, as they published several non-public cracks for The Sims 4 which they attributed to someone from the cracking group RELOADED. This individual was the given access or knowledge related to EA's Origin licensing scheme and DRM, as they began to release their own cracks for updated versions of The Sims 4 based on the same cracking technique.

STEAMPUNKS released unauthorized copies of games which utilized Denuvo digital rights management solutions in 2017, with their first releases being copies of Dishonored 2, ADR1FT, Planet Coaster, and ABZU. Releases by STEAMPUNKS include a license generator which creates a valid hardware ID-based license file. These licenses appear to be identical to those generated by the web-based activation servers operated by Denuvo, and they do not trigger Denuvo's DRM copy protection. This method attracted some attention upon its debut, while license generators and "keymakers" were fairly common in commercial software piracy, they had fallen out of use in cracking games as most games moved to the license management capabilities provided by Steam and other digital distribution platforms. One negative reaction to STEAMPUNKS' license maker came from the warez group SKIDROW in a statement from the group released in July 2017.[19] In late September 2017, STEAMPUNKS became the first warez group to release cracked copies of Denuvo DRM-protected games within 24 hours of their commercial availability, releasing both Total War: Warhammer II and FIFA 18 on the same day they were made available for consumers. There is no reason to believe STEAMPUNKS had advance access to the files for these titles, meaning both were cracked using undisclosed and highly effective 0day vulnerabilities in Denuvo's copy-protection software, as well as EA's Origin DRM in the case of FIFA 18. STEAMPUNKS collaborated with CODEX to crack South Park: The Fractured But Whole upon its release, with the cracked release appearing under the portmanteau group name "CODEPUNKS". Following this and one other collaborative release, STEAMPUNKS became inactive, while CODEX continued to publish cracked versions of games.

Tristar and Red Sector, Inc. (also known as TRSI) began as an alliance between two warez groups: Tristar and Red Sector Incorporated. They were formed in 1990 as a cooperative Commodore 64 demo coding and cracking group. TRSI migrated from the Commodore 64 release platform to the Amiga and IBM-PC, and eventually branched off into the console gaming scene before finally disbanding their warez division. In late 2003, TRSI became inactive and remains so today.[60][third-party source needed]

The United Software Association (also known as USA) was a prominent IBM PC games and applications warez group during the 1990s. USA formed an alliance with the PC warez division of Fairlight which was known as "USA/FLT". In late January 1992, several members of USA were arrested by the United States Secret Service and the Farmington Hills, Michigan police for credit card fraud.

ViTALiTY (also known as VTY) was founded in May 2005. It has been suggested they were former members of DEViANCE.[21] The group was considered blacklisted by many in the warez scene in October 2007,[61] something ViTALiTY claims was orchestrated by rival groups RELOADED[62] and FAiRLiGHT,[63] though the latter claim they were against it.[64] ViTALiTY was accused of either reporting or threatening to report members of other groups to the FBI,[61] though ViTALiTY claimed a senior member of RELOADED threatened to do the same to them.[62] ViTALiTY's last release was an update to The Sims 3 on 8 October 2010.